all the world's a stage

I just pulled into the driveway and saw Sage dancing on the front porch. I asked her what she was up to, and she said, "Trying to get rich."

this is why you can't borrow my iPhone, Evan

the lachrymose leech

If you let your son read a dozen Series of Unfortunate Events books in the weeks immediately before Halloween, expect to start finding these sorts of things around your house.

he wins

Evan's soccer team, the Purple People Eaters, just completed a storybook turnaround, winning 6 of their last 7 games and beating the best teams in their league lopsidedly. (One team hadn't lost a game in two full seasons; the Eaters beat them last Saturday, 4-2, and again yesterday, 5-2.) Evan isn't an especially strong or aggressive athlete, but he uses his head and often seems to be in the right place at the right time; he scored the winning goal in one recent game and the goal that put another game out of reach, had a goal and a picture-perfect assist against the previously undefeated team, etc. During his games I seem unable to keep myself from yelling hysterically from the sidelines -- mostly positive stuff, I hope -- and afterwards I always want to relive the action with him, reviewing his goals frame by frame. He humors me. He can see how into it I am, so he participates in the conversations in much the same way that I participate when he's talking about Legos. But he'd clearly rather be talking about Legos. And I love that. I love the ability of 9-year-old boys to resist all of our efforts to make them something other than 9-year-old boys.

scary spice

Things that my kids have complained were "too spicy" in the past 12 hours: mayonnaise, a sip of Diet Mountain Dew, toothpaste.

preemptive tattling

Today Sage shouted up the stairs that Evan was getting ready to call her a name.

Carefree Highway

Last night when we were driving home, Evan was fiddling around with my iPhone in the back seat, and he asked me to turn on some music. I wasn't sure what he was up to until I saw these videos. Actually, I'm still not sure what he was up to, but I think it's kind of austerely beautiful.

"Check it out. I'm the Statue of Liberty."

"This is the Weird Show"

runaway winner

Evan: "What's the funniest thing that ever happened to you, or that happened while you were around?"

Eric (trying to get dressed for work): "Gosh, Evan. I don't know."

Evan: "You don't have a whole lot of humor in your life."

Eric: "No, I have a lot of humor in my life. A ton of funny things have happened when I was around. It's just hard to come up with the funniest one on the spur of the moment. What's the funniest thing that ever happened while you were around?"

Evan: "When Sage put your underwear on her head and ran around with no pants on and peed on the floor."

be aggressive

i celebrate myself

Here's a fun story about the children's book (and the blog) from Bostonia magazine.

Because this blog is your one-stop source for articles about this blog.

prediction

Evan: "What are you going to be for Halloween?"

Eric: "I still need to give that some thought."

Sage: "I'm going to be a princess."

Evan: "Don't be a princess! Be something original!"

Sage: "I want to be a princess!"

Evan: "There'll be a million princesses on Halloween, but there'll only be one zombie assassin."